Let's Talk About Class Fantasy - Death Knights

[Schizoide]

This is a really great idea for a thread. Good job!

Trying to stay away from mechanical broken stuff like Killing Machine and focus just on the fantasy, how each spec embodies an archetype.

Overall
- Return Shadow of Death (free ghoul self-res). It's worth the dev time.
- Remove the battle res and return Raise Ally as a ghoul, with a 30s cooldown (and once ressed as a ghoul, you cannot be ressed again as a ghoul). If someone else needs a Battle Res, give it to Demon Hunters. DKs resurrecting does not fit the fantasy.
- Make Army of the Dead an impactful cooldown again. It feels castrated now. (As per WoD beta feedback.)

Blood
- Move back to draining life. Death Strike should heal based upon damage done, Mastery should increase both Death Strike damage and Blood Shield, and the DS healing should be impactful and meaningful. Deemphasize Blood Shield, emphasize Death Strike healing. Blood defense should be both reactive and proactive.
- Cosmetically replace Blood Boil with Heart Strike (and a WW-type animation) already. This was very common feedback in WoD beta that was (like most feedback in WoD beta) ignored. Do it. Players want this.
- As another poster said, Blood Worms were another iconic ability lost. Bring them back.
- Give Blood a toggle trading off the character's lifeblood (health) for extra damage. Blood-caked Blade could return, it makes sense as a name for this. This could be exciting in over-geared/weak content, watching your health drop precipitously then getting a huge Death Strike and healing it back up. All tanks should get some way to trade-off tanking for damage in 7.0.

Unholy
- Focus more on spell damage. Change Scourge Strike to deal pure Shadow damage again, rather than the weird bifurcated version we have now.
- This approaches a mechanical problem, but Unholy needs to return to UF/B. Not due to the commonly referenced mechanical problems (although they still exist!) but because Festering Strike is way too strong, to justify its use of two runes. Scourge Strike and Death Coil should be big hits; Festering Strike should be utility, to extend diseases and consume that Blood rune.
- Agree with all the people saying Necrotic Plague should be baseline for Unholy. This was also common WoD beta feedback.
- Allow Unholy to use Control Undead to permanently control any undead, like hunters and beasts. Again, just cosmetic, but this would improve the feel of the spec immensely.

Frost
- Frost has never really had an identity. It's yet another melee spec, flat-out. Frost Mages got their identity with the icicles system-- it was largely cosmetic and passive, but completely transformed how the spec felt. Frost DK needs something similarly impactful and visual.
- I could come up with tons of ideas here, initially focusing on remorseless winter, but cool ideas are easy. Point is that Frost needs somewhere to hang their hat, something to truly differentiate it from Combat and Fury. Howling Blast isn't enough-- but a super-cool (pun not intended) new graphic for Howling Blast wouldn't hurt.